Decent sales for a western game in a dying market. Mario Kart 8 should explode the WiiU with all the hype.

Herok♞

Whats funny is that the WiiU beat the PS4 in sales for the first time even with the new Infamous coming out, I guess the people who wanted the game already bought the system ahead of time.

I wonder how many units for the WiiU Nintendo is going to sell next week and Yokai Watch will hit 1 mil next week if it keeps up this selling rate which is awesome.

Duo Maxwell

It’s more like that not many people care about Infamous in Japan. Look at the sale of the previous games:

Infamous: 14.829
(PS3 install base: 3,786,719)

Infamous 2: 33.474
(PS3 install base: 6,737,420)

Infamous: Second Son: 34.801
(PS4 install base: 581,182)

Honestly, the PS4 seriously needs games. Japanese games, that is.

Herok♞

Well with those numbers increasing even on a platform that has less units out that’s impressive.

darke

Otaku games seem to be coming for it, and the MMOs are already there, but I there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of ‘popular’ games heading for it yet. Even the football game that hit every other platform isn’t on the PS4 yet.

darke

Infamous wasn’t really a systems seller in the western world either. I imagine like in the west, people who bought Infamous already had the console.

Yindustries LLC

Seeing how low the PS4 and the WiiU are selling really makes me curious to see if the Xbone will even register as a blip over there, considering the 360’s performance.

awang0718

With the PS4’s poor performance the Xbone will be lucky to hit 1 million units sold in Japan during it’s lifetime.

永次

1 million? It will hit 300k if Microsoft is lucky.

awang0718

Let’s not be too pessimistic…;)

$51888021

I thought it was normal for Japan to pick up on new console hardware a lot slower than the west (and for good reason), so I’m sure things will pick up with time, I’m sure. That said, XBOX will most certainly have the same fate in japan it did last generation. (;-_-)

awang0718

Japan actually picks up new hardware faster than other markets. The PS2, GBA, DS, PSP, Wii, and PS3 sold the vast majority of there lifetime sales in Japan within the first 3-4 years before interest waned significantly.
The PS4 is sure to receive a big sales boost when Final Fantasy 15 is released. The problem is, that game will be released in March 2015, which is 10 months from now. The PS4 will stuggle greatly during these 10 months, and it will likely struggle again after the excitement for FF15 wears away.

…And how did they get that fanbase? Fanservice. So yeah, you’re right on the money ( =ᴗ=)

Yan Zhao

I mean, I enjoy the manga too, but I wouldnt buy such a mediocre game for it lol.

Warboss Aohd

InFamous Second Son deserves it’s success

It’s a good game. Not as good as 1 and 2, but only by a small amount.

subsamuel01

The gameplay for Second Son was a lot better, but Cole was a much better main character. Plus the story was a lot more compelling, still a great game can’t wait for the next one.

Warboss Aohd

My Thoughts exactly actually.

Gameplay is improved (like having more than one set of powers.), but the Story really wasn’t as good. (which is a shame cause the characters themselves were good, they just were kinda squandered.)

subsamuel01

The set up for the Villain was brilliant, I hated her from the moment she was shown. Delsin just felt like a generic rebel teenager, I just felt like Cole was a more flushed out character. Delsin evil ending was good though, I think he makes a much better villain than hero.

Warboss Aohd

yeah, i really like how Augustine was written.

PreyMantis

It just needs more anime moe and big plots… lots of big plots.

Warboss Aohd

No

$51888021

>Infamous SS beats To Love Ru, the mother of all harem romps, by a large margin

I guess what they say about otaku being a niche in the grand scheme of things really isn’t BS. (;╹-╹)

Considering that Infamous is basically an otaku game in Japan, it’s doing well, but not great.

Ethan_Twain

I have a few questions:

1. When was the last time a video game sold more than a million units in Japan on a system that’s not the 3DS?

2. When was the last time a video game sold more than a million units in Japan on a system that’s not portable?

3. Are there any games releasing this year that have a good shot of selling more than a million units in Japan?

The fact that I can’t easily answer these questions kinda bums me out. If I had to guess I would say 1. Monster Hunter PSP 2. New Super Mario Bros Wii and 3. Yo-Kai Watch 2

subsamuel01

Console games are a lot more expensive then handhelds, plus it seems Japan has more interests in mobile. Even Mario 3D World under performed in Japan.

Japan used to be a juggernaut of a market for games, sadly their market is just shrinking. A game like Infamous selling only 30K in its debut just proves my point.

malek86

1. Assuming you are also not counting DS games (otherwise there would be Pokemon B&W2), that is correct. MHP3 was the last one on a non-Nintendo portable.

2. That would be Wii Party, which was released in 2010. It was a long time ago, yep. Although RE6 and One Piece Musou got almost there (about 800k each).

3. Yokai Watch 2 on the long term, but I’m thinking that Smash Bros on 3DS might be able to reach it relatively quickly. Not much else though. In fact, I’d say nothing else.

Ethan_Twain

Thank you for providing the answers to my questions.

So now that we know that data: Is it just me or is the Japanese video game market in a bad way? Like, a real bad way. There are only three companies that can make million sellers within Japan: Capcom with Monster Hunter, Square Enix with Dragon Quest, and Nintendo.

Well no WONDER Japanese games aren’t keeping up with the rest of the world in terms of high spec technology integration or popular design trends! Only the biggest domestic hits sell as many units as a run of the mill Electronic Arts “failure” like Dead Space 3 or Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

I guess Inafune had it right all along. With mobile phones shrinking the domestic traditional game market there just aren’t enough people buying video games in Japan to support particularly expensive development cycles. So developers need to either go all in on securing big sales in the western market, or regress to super cheap development and anime licenses to guarantee sales for the domestic audience.

I guess I’m glad I better understand things now, but as far as the Japanese industry creating products I personally want to play the outlook suddenly looks bleak.

ronin4life

I feel the same about the western audience(Of devs, I mean)…

The difference is things seem bad for Japan and not for the west, when things actually aren’t good for the west either. And with the exact opposite signs…

Ethan_Twain

I feel the same about the AAA portion of the western development scene to be certain. I get motion sickness from first person shooters and I also get squeamish about mass murder/excessive violence. That makes an AWFUL lot of big budget western video games unappealing to me.

But here’s how I break it down (this isn’t talking about quality of games in average, this is just how I break it down for my very specific tastes):

Small/Medium Japanese games: Nope. I’m not into fanservice and not into anime. If you subtract the fanservice games and the anime licensed games and you subtract the games that don’t get localized and what’s left in this category? Harvest Moon and Atlus games and… that’s about it. I love Atlus games mostly, but there’s just not a ton here.

AAA Western games: Nope. Not into shooting, not into online play much really, not into space marines, not into visceral violence.

AAA Japanese games: Yes! Nintendo first party is great, Dragon Quest is and always has been better than Final Fantasy, and I have a lot of respect for Monster Hunter. The problem? There’s hardly any AAA Japanese games left.

Small/Medium Western games : Yes/nope. This is far and away the most diverse category here, and as fewer of my traditional gaming options are available over time I’m finding more and more to like here. I mean, there’s plenty I DON’T like, but there are just so many games coming out from indies and small team efforts that it doesn’t matter. Transistor is great. I totally dig Child of Light. Valiant Hearts looks super promising.

So to conclude, I feel like Japan is producing fewer of the games that I’m into. When they release I still love the occasional Xenoblade or Animal Crossing, but those games become more scarce by the year. At the same time, the western development scene is ballooning out to the point where you can find almost anything. And a lot of it is a lot of fun! Not Animal Crossing fun but… it’s what’s on the market.

ronin4life

For the west, I feel the indy scene and some PC devs are doing good, but pretty much everyone higher than that is just forming into a singularity of tunnel-action games. Kind of, like I said earlier, the exact opposite of Japan: were Big games are lesser populated but great and more common games are kind of all the same anime/otaku stuff… not that I find it all bad.(Hoping the Girls Und Panzer game is enough like World of Tanks so I can have awesome tank combat on a system I need more reasons to get…)
^ ,^;;

One thing I dislike is the whole “AAA” thing Every major high end dev globally and a few mid-level western devs are guilty of. Namely, high production costs that don’t result in a High quality *Gaming* experience. Because for me, it is usually how the game feels to play, how its game design works, and not how it looks or were the story goes that is important – barring ridiculously bad graphics/story of course. And from the lot of Major companies outside Nintendo (which I barely count as “AAA” anyway based on how they approach development) that is what I am seeing out of these companies. At least for now, Japanese groups like SE and Capcom have some franchises they seem to handle well like Monster Hunter and Bravely default.

I think overall, we feel the same way. Except I personally like the Mid-High Japanese games more than the Mid-Low Western Games respectively since many indies are either making things I don’t like(Which is a really misnomer, because there are so many games and indies out there) or Mid-level groups are increasingly doing what AAA Pubs are doing that I dislike, and that I have almost lost all faith in the concept of “AAA” because it just doesn’t appear to mean what it should anymore.

^ ,^

Domii

Both you and Ronin bring up good points about the Japanese game industry. But I think you guys have overlooked one developer that I believe and been saying for years now have found a balance between western success and domestic success. From Software. The souls games have been the best thing to come out of Japan in a long time. From Software have found ways to cater to both the Japanese console market and western with their unique approach in the Souls games. In my opinion other Japanese developers should follow their example.

Ethan_Twain

Yeah, they’re a success story. They were scraping along with really small scale games like their mecha series or that pixel hero game. Souls kinda blew up though.

We will see how or to what extent their situation changes now that they’ve been bought out.

malek86

While Dark Souls is a big success worldwide, the games still don’t reach 500k sales in Japan. So they are still on a very different scale from Capcom/Squenix/Nintendo.

It seems that, to rake in the real big money in Japan, you must find some secret ingredient that very few companies have managed to discover. It’s usually just Nintendo (and Squenix, living off an extremely old formula that mostly still works), and only Capcom unexpectedly hit it big with Monster Hunter.

Or perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. Let’s say that home consoles are pretty much dead. So, to make big sales, you need to target portables. If that’s the case, only Capcom, Squenix and Nintendo could have done it to begin with. Why? Because everyone else seems to treat portables as a second-rate platform. So it’s no surprise that they wouldn’t sell as much.

Domii

I was mostly referring to home consoles. That’s why I mention the Souls games because unlike those other companies, they manage to be somewhat successful in every territory without blowing up too much on AAA investment.

ronin4life

MH4G?
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire?(or is that next year… ? _.)

malek86

Right, I forgot about those.

revenent hell

I never really thought much about Infamous. I didn’t think the games where bad but I never thought they where particularly good either….Just kind of something there to pass the time if nothing else was available really…..
I don’t think the number of its sales are bad considering Japan seems to be a bigger market for mobile games more than any other type though.

darke

Other than annoying boss fights that played completely different to the rest of the game (thus, they suck and aren’t much fun, but at least are over quick), the game is a very pretty looking, competently executed open-world game. Basically felt like a Saint’s Row IV that takes itself seriously.

But yeah, it’s nothing special, but given that games are designed to be fun ways to pass time, it’s hard to complain about something doing just that. :)

Anyway, I did think the Japan sales were ‘ok’, given that it’s very ‘western’ in tone, world and theme.

revenent hell

I don’t really think it matters whether its “western” in style or any other for that matter when it comes to game sales. A good game will make people want to play it regardless if its western, eastern or dropped off of a UFO.

What its played on, on the other hand is a factor though since certain regions have a particular thought in mind when it comes to games and how they want to play them.

Frankly Japan is just big on “games on the go” type things so I don’t think the sales for a home console game are that bad really for that area.

I played Infamous Second Son for a little while, and I have to say it’s pretty fun (Though after getting Dynasty Warriors, Child of Light, and Watch Dogs I haven’t gotten back around to it) As a wise man once said…It’s short and sweet :P

Though I still look forward to the upcoming “niche games for thevPS4….Omega Quintet, Natural Doctirne, The Musou games, Aibas Trip (Hopefully) So I’m pumped! :D

Syltique

I just beat infamous last night. It’s one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory. I am very stingy with my 10/10’s, but I think this game unquestionably gets one. It’s just so obvious, at nearly every point you look, that the developers choose to make this a labor of love. I love the OST, the story, the characters, the voice acting and dialogue were charming and extremely enjoyable, the graphics melted my eyes, and the controls are huge upgrade from the past 2 games. Each power holds unique ways of play that take a little while to grasp. Easy to play, slightly difficult to fully master.

I just loved this game. Even with its success, it feels underrated. I felt like writing a letter to the developers about how much I enjoyed and appreciated all the little details they put in there.